Deciding to open up real estate to the rental market is not as effortless as marketing the vacancies and waiting for a steady stream of income to pour in from rentals. While it’s possible for that to happen, it takes a lot of work, and good property management means exercising these traits with your residencies and residents for productive, long-term financial success and stability.

Be A Planner

Setting goals and long-term strategies is a great way to provide yourself with more direction in your decisions. Whether you are trying to be more cost-effective or maintain a certain minimum standard of living for reputational and marketing purposes, concrete goals to plan toward help inform all the actions and decisions you make in your property management endeavors.

Carefully Screen Potential Residents

The ideal property management scenario is to have reliable, respectful residents who care for their residence, get along with others in the residencies, and, of course, reliably pay rent on time. However, you can’t just hope you get residents like this. Put techniques and screening requirements in place to ensure that your current residents don’t end up with new additions that bring disharmony and financial instability to your property management.

Be Diligent About Inspections

When you ignore or are unaware of potential problems in a building, these unattended issues can grow bigger and more expensive to resolve when you finally get around to addressing them. The best way to avoid an unnecessarily expensive situation is to make it a regular habit to run quarterly inspections. This way, any small issues with roofing, ventilation, or other aspects of the building can be found and addressed when they are easier and cheaper to manage.

Establish Relationships With Residents

The best way to keep residents happy and paying rent on time is to know who they are and what they need. Happy residents are more likely to stay, while unhappy residents, even if they are timely with their rent, may look for other places to live if they are unsatisfied with current conditions. A willingness to engage with residents and get to know their needs goes a long way toward satisfying them and retaining them as residents for the long term.

Deal With The Paperwork

Nobody likes paperwork until there comes a time when a particular piece of data on some paper could become crucial to helping you resolve a dispute or even improve your financial situation. Paperwork is an essential and unavoidable part of property management, even if it may not be the most exciting component. A willingness to be diligent about filling and organizing paperwork leads to a smoother property management experience.

Be Proactive

People willing to plan should also be willing to take action in service to those plans. This means being proactive and putting in the work before something arises that requires you to react to and potentially be on a defensive footing. In the same way that taking preventive health steps avoids more serious medical-related action later, being proactive and anticipating needs and issues creates a better experience for everyone.

If you’d like to help better manage your property rental investments, contact Occupancy Solutions and let us help.